Shoora and Democracy: A Conceptual Analysis

By Dr. Ja`far Sheikh Idris

What is shoora?

Shoora comes from an Arabic word shara whose original
meaning, according to classical Arabic dictionaries was to extract honey from
hives.The word then acquired secondary meanings all of which are related
to that original one. One of these secondary meanings is consultation and
deliberation. The way consultation and deliberation bring forth ideas and
opinions from peoples' minds must have been seen to be analogous to the
extracting of honey from hives. It might also have been thought that good ideas
and opinions were as sweet and precious as honey.

According to this purely linguistic meaning, shoora is no more
than a procedure of making decisions. It can thus be defined as the procedure
of making decisions by consultation and deliberation among those who have an
interest in the matter on which a decision is to be taken, or others who can
help them to reach such a decision.

The important matter on which shoora is made can be either a
matter which concerns an individual, or a matter which concerns a group of
individuals, or a matter that is of interest to the whole public. Let us call
the first individual shoora, the second group shoora, and the
third public shoora.

Thus formally understood, shoora has nothing to do with the kind
of matter to be decided upon, or the basis on which those consulted make their
decisions, or the decision reached, because it is a mere procedure, a tool you
might say, that can be used by any group of people - a gang of robbers, a
military junta, an American Senate or a council of Muslim representatives.

There is thus nothing in the concept which makes it intrinsically
Islamic. And as a matter of fact shoora in one form or the other was practiced
even before Islam. An Arab Bedouin is reported to have said, "Never do I suffer
a misfortune that is not suffered by my people." When asked how come, he said,
"Because I never do anything until I consult them, astasheerahum.. “ It
is also said that Arab noblemen used to be greatly distressed if a matter was
decided without their shoora. Non Arabs also practiced it. The Queen of Sheba
was, according to the Qur'an, in the habit of never making a decision without
consulting her chieftains..

What is democracy?

What is democracy? The usual definition is rule, kratos, by
the people, demos. On the face of it, then, democracy has nothing to do
with shoora. But once we ask: "How do the people rule?" we begin to see the
connection.

'Ruling' implies ruling over someone or
some group, and if all the people rule, over whom is it that they rule? (Barry,
208)

The answer on which almost all democracy theorists are agreed is
that what is meant by rule here is that they make basic decisions on matters of
public policy. How do they make those decisions? Ideally by discussion and
deliberation in face-to-face meetings of the people, as was the case in Athens.

Similarities

Democracy, then, has also to do with decisions taken after
deliberation. But this is what an Arab would have described as shoora. It might
be thought that there still seem to be some differences between shoora and
democracy, because the latter seems to be confined to political matters. But the
concept of democracy can easily be extended to other aspects of life, because a
people who choose to give the power of decision-making on political matters to
the whole population, should not hesitate to give similar power to individuals
who form a smaller organization, if the matter is of interest to each one of
them. The concept of democracy can be and is, therefore, extended to include
such groups as political parties, charitable organizations and trade unions.
Thus broadly understood, democracy is almost identical with shoora. There is
thus nothing in the primary or extended meaning of democracy which makes it
intrinsically Western or secular. If shoora can take a secular form, so can
democracy take an Islamic form.

Islam and secular democracy

Basic differences

What is it that characterizes shoora when it takes an Islamic
form, what is it that characterizes democracy when it takes a secular form, and
what are the differences between these forms, and the similarities, if any? What
would each of them take, if put in the framework of the other? I cannot go into
all the details of this here. Let me concentrate therefore on some of the vital
issues which separate Islam and secularism as world outlooks, and therefore give
democracy and shoora those special forms when placed within their
frameworks.

Let us understand by secularism the belief that religion should
not have anything to do with public policy, and should at most be tolerated only
as a private matter. The first point to realize here is that there is no logical
connection between secularism and democracy. Secularism is as compatible with
despotism and tyranny as it is compatible with democracy. A people who believe
in secularism can therefore without any violation of it choose to be ruled
tyrannically.

Suppose they choose to have a democratic system. Here they have
two choices:

a. They can choose to make the people absolutely supreme, in
the sense that they or their representatives are absolutely free to decide with
majority vote on any issue, or pass or repeal any laws. This form of democracy
is the antithesis of Islam because it puts what it calls the people in the place
of God; in Islam only God has this absolute power of legislation. Anyone who
claims such a right is claiming to be God, and any one who gives him that right
is thereby accepting him as God. But then the same thing would happen if such a
secular community accepted the principle of shoora, because they would not then
exclude any matter from its domain, and there is nothing in the concept of
shoora which makes that a violation of it.

b. Alternatively those secular people can choose a form of
democracy in which the right of the people to legislate is limited by what is
believed by society to be a higher law to which human law is subordinate and
should not therefore violate. Whether such a democracy is compatible with Islam
or not depends on the nature and scope of the limits, and on what is believed to
be a higher law.

In liberal democracy not even the majority of the whole population
has the right to deprive a minority, even if it be one individual, of what is
believed to be their inalienable human rights. Belief in such rights has nothing
to do with secularism, which is perfectly compatible, as we saw, with a
democracy without limits. There is a basic difference between Islam and this
form of democracy, and there are minor differences, but there are also
similarities.

The basic difference is that in Islam it is God's law as expressed
in the Qur'an and the Sunna that is the supreme law within the limits of which
people have the right to legislate. No one can be a Muslim who makes, or freely
accepts, or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept, legislation
that is contrary to that Divine law. Examples of such violations include the
legalization of alcoholic drinks, gambling, homosexuality, usury or interest,
and even adoption.

When some Muslims object to democracy and describe it as
un-Islamic, it is these kinds of legislation that they have in mind. A shoora
without restriction or a liberal shoora would, however, be as un-Islamic as a
liberal or an unconstrained democracy. The problem is with secularism or
liberalism, not with democracy, and will not therefore disappear by adoption of
shoora instead of democracy.

Another basic difference, which is a corollary of this, is that
unlike liberal democracy, Islamic shoora is not a political system, because most
of the principles and values according to which society is to be organized, and
by which it should abide, are stated in that higher law. The proper description
of a political system that is based on those principles is that it is Islamic
and not shooraic, because shoora is only one component of it.

This characteristic of Islam made society immune to absolute
tyranny and dictatorship. There have been Muslim rulers who were despotic, but
they were so only in that they were not chosen by the true representatives of
the Muslim people, or that they were not strict in abiding by some of the
Islamic teachings; but none of those who called themselves Muslim rulers dared,
or perhaps even wanted, to abolish the Islamic law.

This emphasis on the law stood in the way of absolute tyranny in
another way. It gave the ulama so much legislative power that it was their word,
and not that of the ruler that was final on many matters. An interesting section
of one of al Bukhari's chapters reads: If the ruler makes a decision that is
contrary to that of people of knowledge, his decision is to be rejected.

Walter Lippman considers it a weakness of democracy that it laid
more emphasis on the origin of government rather than on what it should do. He
says (Rossiter, 1982, p. 21) :

The democratic fallacy has been its preoccupation with the origin
of government rather than the processes and results. The democrat has always
assumed that if political power could be derived in the right way, it would be
beneficent. His whole attention has been on the source of power, since he is
hypnotized by the belief that the great thing is to express the will of the
people, first because expression is the highest interest of man, and second
because the will is instinctively good. But no amount of regulation at the
source of a river will completely control its behavior, and while democrats have
been absorbed in trying to find a good mechanism of originating social power,
that is to say, a good mechanism of voting and representation, they neglected
almost every other interest of men.

Similarities

So much for the basic differences, we now come to the
similarities, and some of the less basic or minor differences.

Islam and liberalism share certain values, basically those which
the concepts of democracy and shoora entail.

In liberal democracy there are rights which individuals have as
individuals, even if they are in a minority. These rights are said to be
inalienable and cannot, therefore, theoretically speaking, be violated, even by
the overwhelming majority of the population. Such violation, even if embodied in
a constitution, makes the government undemocratic, even tyrannical. One might
think that the idea of inalienable rights is not compatible with the
basic concept of democracy as rule of the people, because if the people choose,
by majority vote, to deny some section of the population some of what the
liberals call their human rights, then that is the rule of the people, and it
would thus be undemocratic to not to let it pass. But on close inspection one
can see that this is not so. It is not so because the concept of democracy
entails that of equality. It is because the people are equal in having the right
to express their opinion as to how they should be ruled that democracy is the
rule of the people. But surely individuals have rights that are more basic than
participating in decision making whether directly or indirectly. To participate
they must be alive, they must be able to express themselves, and so on. There is
thus no contradiction between the concept of democracy or shoora and the idea of
inalienable rights that sets limits on majority rule, because the former is more
basic to democracy than the latter.

If I am right in saying that these values are entailed by
democracy and shoora, it follows that absolute democracy, democracy that is not
constrained by those values, is a contradiction in terms.

Islamic shoora agrees with liberal democracy that among the
important issues to be decided by the people is that of choosing their rulers.
This was understood from the fact that the Prophet chose not to appoint his
successor, but left it to the Muslims to do so, and this was what they did in a
general meeting in his town al-Madina. When it was reported to Umar, the second
Caliph, that someone said that if Umar died he would give allegiance to so and
so as Caliph, he got very angry and said that he would warn the Muslims "against
those who want to forcibly deny them (their right)". He later made a public
speech in which he said,

If a person give allegiance to a man, as
ruler, without a consultative approval of the Muslims, ala ghayri
mashoorati-n min al muslimeen, then neither he nor the man to whom he gave
allegiance should be followed (Bukhari, al Muharibeen)

As far as my knowledge goes the manner in which this public right
is to be exercised, is not specified in any authoritative statements or
practice. The first four, The exemplary Caliphs were chosen in different ways.

Is the Islamic state democratic?

Can a country that abides by the principle of shoora constrained
by Islamic values be described as democratic? Yes, if democracy is broadly
defined in terms of decision-making by the people. No, if it is arbitrarily
defined in a way that identifies it with the contemporary Western brands of it.
Such definitions commit what Holden (1988, p. 4) calls the definitional
fallacy.

In essence it is the fallacy of believing that the meaning of
'democracy' is to be found simply by examining the systems usually called
democracies. A common example of this is the idea that if you want to know what
democracy is, you simply have a look at the political systems of Britain and
America. There are some deep-rooted misconceptions involved here. Apart from
anything else, though, such an idea involves the absurdity of being unable to
ask whether Britain and America are democracies: if 'democracy' means , say, 'like the British political system' we cannot ask if Britain
is a democracy.

An example of a definition which commits this fallacy is that of
Fukuyama (1992, p. 43)

In judging which countries are democratic,
we will use a strictly formal definition of democracy. A country is democratic
if it grants its people the right to choose their own government through
periodic secret-ballot, multi-party elections on the basis of universal and
equal adult suffrage.

There was no universal suffrage in Athens where women, slaves, and
aliens were excluded; no universal suffrage in America until 1920, in Britain
until 1918 or 1928, and in Switzerland until 1971. Fukuyama's definition would
exclude all these, and would apply only to contemporary Western democracies or
ones that are copies of them.

I called such a definition arbitrary because it selected, without
any rational criterion, only those features which are common to the Western
democracies, but not those on which they differ, and made them necessary
conditions for a country being democratic. Otherwise instead of government, it
could have said 'their own president', but that would have excluded Britain and
some other European democracies. It could also have been specific on the periods
of time between elections, but that would again have excluded some Western
democracies.

Why should the right to form political parties be a condition for
democracy? Suppose that a country gave its people, as individuals, and not as
party members, the right to freely choose their government, why should that
exclude it from being a democracy?

Why should government elections be periodic? Can't a country be
democratic and set no limit to the term of its ruler so long as he was doing his
job in a satisfactory manner, but gave the elected body that chose him the power
to remove him if and whenever they thought that he was no longer fit for the
job?

Having said all this, I must add that I do not set any great store
on the epithet 'democratic'. What is important to me is the extent to which a
country is Islamic, the extent to which it abides by Islamic principles,
of which decision making by the people is only one component and, though
important, is not the most important.

Noble Qur'an (3:102)

O ye who believe! Heed Allah as He deserves to be heeded, and die not except in a state of Islam [in submission to Him].

Narrated Abu Huraira: Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) said,

"On the Day of Resurrection Allah will hold the whole earth and fold the heaven with His right hand and say, 'I am the King: where are the kings of the earth?" (Al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 93, Number 479)

25 Duas from the Nobal Qur'an

1. Our Lord! Grant us good in this world and good in the life to come and keep us safe from the torment of the Fire. (2:201)

2. Our Lord! Bestow on us endurance and make our foothold sure and give us help against those who reject faith. (2:250)

3. Our Lord! Take us not to task if we forget or fall into error. (2:286)

4. Our Lord! Lay not upon us such a burden as You did lay upon those before us. (2:286)

5. Our Lord! Impose not on us that which we have not the strength to bear, grant us forgiveness and have mercy on us. You are our Protector. Help us against those who deny the truth. (2:286)

6. Our Lord! Let not our hearts deviate from the truth after You have guided us, and bestow upon us mercy from Your grace. Verily You are the Giver of bounties without measure. (3:8)

7. Our Lord! Forgive us our sins and the lack of moderation in our doings, and make firm our steps and succour us against those who deny the truth. (3:147)

8. Our Lord! Whomsoever You shall commit to the Fire, truly You have brought [him] to disgrace, and never will wrongdoers find any helpers. (3:192)

9. Our Lord! Behold we have heard a voice calling us unto faith: "Believe in your Lord" and we have believed. (3:193)

10. Our Lord! Forgive us our sins and efface our bad deeds and take our souls in the company of the righteous. (3:193)

11. Our Lord! And grant us that which you have promised to us by Your messengers and save us from shame on the Day of Judgement. Verily You never fail to fulfill Your promise. (3:194)

12. Our Lord! We have sinned against ourselves, and unless You grant us forgiveness and bestow Your mercy upon us, we shall most certainly be lost! (7:23)

13. Our Lord! Place us not among the people who have been guilty of evildoing. (7:47)

14. Our Lord! Lay open the truth between us and our people, for You are the best of all to lay open the truth. (7:89)

15. Our Lord! Pour out on us patience and constancy, and make us die as those who have surrendered themselves unto You. (7:126)

16. Our Lord! Make us not a trial for the evildoing folk, and save as by Your mercy from people who deny the truth. (10:85-86)

17. Our Lord! You truly know all that we may hide [in our hearts] as well as all that we bring into the open, for nothing whatever, be it on earth or in heaven, remains hidden from Allah (14:38)

18. Our Lord! Bestow on us mercy from Your presence and dispose of our affairs for us in the right way. (18:10)

19. Our Lord! Grant that our spouses and our offspring be a comfort to our eyes, and give us the grace to lead those who are conscious of You. (25:74)

20. Our Lord! You embrace all things within Your Grace and Knowledge, forgive those who repent and follow Your path, and ward off from them the punishment of Hell. (40:7)

21. Our Lord! Make them enter the Garden of Eden which You have promised to them, and to the righteous from among their fathers, their wives and their offspring, for verily You are alone the Almighty and the truly Wise. (40:8)

22. Our Lord! Relieve us of the torment, for we do really believe. (44:12)

23. Our Lord! Forgive us our sins as well as those of our brethren who proceeded us in faith and let not our hearts entertain any unworthy thoughts or feelings against [any of] those who have believed. Our Lord! You are indeed full of kindness and Most Merciful (59:10)

24. Our Lord! In You we have placed our trust, and to You do we turn in repentance, for unto You is the end of all journeys. (60:4)

25. Our Lord! Perfect our light for us and forgive us our sins, for verily You have power over all things. (66:8)